As UCI students, we were disturbed by the news that Officer Jared Kemper, from our campus’s police force, unholstered his sidearm and pointed it at students. That Officer Kemper seemed emotionally distraught as he faced down students with a loaded weapon worries us even more.

Officer Kemper was also involved in an incident in 2007, in which an FBI agent conducting surveillance on a Muslim student-sponsored event deliberately drove into a crowd of students after he was approached by an organizer. Kemper, who was also surveilling those students, pulled over the FBI driver before letting them go; students were later told that the driver was with the FBI.

Given this behavior, it is clear that Officer Kemper is unfit to serve the UCI and UC communities. Not only has he shown little respect for Constitutional rights, but he has shown his potential to seriously injure, or kill, a UC student.

But we are not concerned merely with one bad able. The UC police and the UC administrations have demonstrated a track record of violence against students and suppression of political speech.

Therefore, we call for the following:
* The immediate termination of Officer Jared Kemper
* The immediate disarming of all UC police of all ranks – of both tasers and guns
* The immediate end to suppression and criminalization of permitted and non-destructive political speech
* The immediate dismissal of criminal and student conduct charges against student protesters
* The immediate repeal of last year’s 32% fee hike and this year’s 8% increase

No, we genuinely believe that UCPD should fight actual crime like sexual assault and the relatively frequent (1-2 per year) murders at UCI, rather than arresting students without cause and threatening to harm students who are trying to address the problems on campus that the administration seems incapable of doing.